Presupposition Projection and Main Content

Résumé En

In this paper, we discuss a recent approach to projection (Simons et al. 2011, 2017, Beaver et al. 2017), which argues for the latter perspective, making projection essentially a side-effect of the management of the Question Under Discussion (QUD) à-la Roberts (2012). We call this theory the QUD-based approach. we argue that this view is only partially correct. Our precise reasons for this claim are stated in the relevant sections, but we can motivate our reservations from a more general point of view.The QUD-based approach is, to a large extent, a radical pragmatics approach, that is, it makes presupposition projection essentially revolve around the interpretation of speakers’ intentions as to the discourse topic. While emphasizing the role of pragmatics has been an influential and successful trend in theoretical linguistics for years, it seems that the time has come for a more balanced view, which makes room for learning linguistic usages. People certainly react to contexts and adjust their contribution to discourse interaction, but they no less certainly learn preferences of usage. When these preferences are ‘strong’, that is, strongly context-independent, they can conflict with ‘soft’, that is, context-dependent, pragmatic pressures. In that case, delineating the equilibrium between the different forces cannot always be done in acrisp and clear way, by applying elegant principles to derive a robust solution. We have to accept the possibility that things are murkier than one may wish. With respect to presupposition projection, we argue that lexical preferences (strong), discourse attachments (strong) and QUD- relevance (soft) interact in a number of ways, some of which we describe in the last section (4).